THE PIONEERS OF BALLARAT.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 1008, 27 September 1872, Page 2

THE PIONEERS OF BALLARAT.

['B.ilaratStar.'] The first gathering of the pioneers of Biillarat took place on Monday, the 2Gth August, to celebrate the twentyfirst anniversary of the rocking of the first gold-cradle in Ballarat. The Alfred Hall was the trysting-plaee, and the hall was gaily decorated with flags and evergreens. All the spacious nave of the hall was enclosed, and besides a cross table at the top, four lines of tables ran the whole length of the hall, save an emergency cross table at the bottom, which was also crowded, and not seats enough then for all the crowding gnests. There never has been so large a public dinner in Ballarat as this of the Ballarat pioneers. When the Duke of pJdinburgh was feted in the same hall some 252 guests assembled ; but on this occasion of the gathering of the pioneers 439 guests sat down, and many were excluded because they had not obtained tickets in time, and the provision made would not allow of the pdmittanco of more than the tables could accommodate. A goodly number of lady pioneers joined the assembly, and thus added a grace to the gathering which most public banquets lack. . Lady friends of pioneers also, but who were not pioneers, and therefore not entitled to a seat at the banquet, were admitted to the gallery, aud the scene presented was therefore altogether one of tho gayest that has been seen in Ballarat. A peculiar interest was given to tho spectacle from the fact that for the first time in Ballarat these were met together men and women who had fought through the old, hard, rough times of the early days, when there was no borough or city, aud no elegant homes, with their conveniences of civilisation, to afford the means of comfortable repose and domestic enjoyment, such as the city and district ' now possess. From all parts of tho district and colony there came men grey with tho gathered years, and with memories full of tho old times that can never como back again. The men who first found gold on Golden Poiut wero represented by Wood.

ward and Warren ; Mr Adains, " the father of Buniuyong," was there; George Innes, the "king of the splitters," was there. He was taken from the plough to act as guide to General Macarthur's troops in their approach to Ballarat in 1854. Mr Oddie, Mr Bath, and others of the ISSI days was there, and chief and first of the pioneer ladies, Mrs Bath, was there, and it was one of the events of the evening that that lady was formally invested by the president with a laurel wreath in token of her being the first woman who braved the then unknown dangers and hardships of the then new goldfield. The investment was accompanied by a chaste presidental embrace, amid the ringing cheers of the large assembly.